Lo3 heads and porting. can it be done
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Car: 91 Camaro RS
Engine: 305 LO3
Transmission: 700-R4
Lo3 heads and porting. can it be done
First I know the Lo3 heads are crap and not thought of as worth the time, but would port and polishing them a bit help any?
reason I ask is at this point in time I just can not afford a set of heads even used ones.
Im wanting to pull the heads and intake to clean them up, and figured a little port and polish work on the heads is bound to be better than than the condition they are in now after nearly 200,000 miles.
Im hoping doing this combined with the headers Im hoping to get soon will show some improvement. what do you all think?
reason I ask is at this point in time I just can not afford a set of heads even used ones.
Im wanting to pull the heads and intake to clean them up, and figured a little port and polish work on the heads is bound to be better than than the condition they are in now after nearly 200,000 miles.
Im hoping doing this combined with the headers Im hoping to get soon will show some improvement. what do you all think?
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Car: 89 RS
Engine: lo3
Transmission: 700R4 w/ B&M shift improver
Axle/Gears: 3.27 9-bolt posi
Although i havent ported a set of head yet, i am planning on doing it as a summer project. From what ive read the heads on the lo3 are ****, as in, pull them off, go get a set of 416 castings, and port them. Save your money and do it right. And yes, its supposed to make a huge difference, I bet if you did the headers/heads/intake at the same time, you'd think you were driving a whole new car after it was all put back together!
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Car: '90 RS
Engine: 377 LSX
Transmission: Magnum T56
I was in the same boat as you and I wanted to port them more for a learning experience than performance gains. I almost took them off when I did my cam swap and I looked at them closely and thought to myself "what would I port." When you look into the ports you don't even know where to begin. It is not even worth practicing on becuase no other head would be that hard to port. The pushtroad guides almost completely block the intake port and that is just one of many flaws. There is excess material everywhere!! They are just pure garbage any way you look at them. So I shrugged it off and left them alone. By the time you port them sucesfully you would have gone through a million grinders and equally as many bits and a trillion man hours. You should just stare at them and say "these are truly horrible" and walk away.
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I see that you have the '91. You should look for 081 castings. They will be a direct bolt on and you can keep your center bolt valve covers.
If you get the 416 casting then you will have to enlongate (make them oval) the 4 center bolt holes on your intake and switch to perimeter bolt valve covers. Both cheap to do, but the 081 castings would probably be cheaper.
If you get the 416 casting then you will have to enlongate (make them oval) the 4 center bolt holes on your intake and switch to perimeter bolt valve covers. Both cheap to do, but the 081 castings would probably be cheaper.
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